Terms

Sanskrit

Sanskrit is the ancient language of India. It was much more than a simple method of communication. It was a sacred language in the sense that its basic sounds were intimately connected with a theory of creation and a cosmology of the phyiscal, mental and spiritual worlds. Sanskriti means acting according to culture. It comes from the Sankrit word samskrta; perfect, complete. It is also called devanagari: divine language. The alphabet is subdivided into 15 vowels (Skt., nityas) and 36 (semi-vowels and) consonants (Skt., tattvas); making it one of the largest alphabetic scripts in use today.